People rely on disposable absorbent garments in their everyday lives, including such garments as adult incontinence products, enuresis pants, training pants, and diapers. Many manufacturers seek to better meet the needs of users of such products. With certain products, such as adult incontinence underwear and enuresis pants, it is important that the garment feel as much as possible like “regular” underwear to promote an improved sense of normalcy to the wearer who suffers from incontinence or enuresis. Additionally, purchasers and users of such products are frequently embarrassed about their condition and about having to purchase products to deal with their incontinence or enuresis condition.
Currently, the most common method for obtaining incontinence and enuresis underwear is by purchasing relatively large bags in retail stores. Consumers are sometimes uncomfortable with having to place a large bag (e.g., 15 or more articles) of disposable absorbent garments in their cart, with having to proceed through checkout with this large bag, and/or with having this large bag present in their home. Furthermore, conventional packages of incontinence and enuresis underwear are opaque or mostly opaque, which some purchasers may perceive as overly “diaper-like” or too strongly connoting the presence of a personal care absorbent product directed to a urinary condition.
Therefore, there is a need for a package of incontinence or enuresis underwear that is smaller than conventional large bags of disposable absorbent underwear. There is also a need for a package of incontinence or enuresis underwear that better resembles “real underwear” so as to improve the feeling of normalcy for the purchaser/user.
U.S. 2004/0211696 published Oct. 28, 2004 in the name of Underhill et al. discloses a partially clear package of three rolled disposable training pants. However, the package disclosed in the '696 publication is not configured to provide optimal on-shelf upright stability, such as if the retailer or purchaser wished to stand the package upright on a shelf. In addition, it may be desirable to display disposable absorbent garments such that they appear relatively smooth and “cloth-like” through a package display window, minimizing the appearance of elastic gathers, which to some undesirably signify the presence of diaper-like personal care products. (Many conventional pant-like, pull-on style absorbent garments currently on the market, such as that depicted in FIG. 1, employ a product chassis in which multiple threads of elastic or sheets of elastic film are sandwiched between two nonwoven fabric layers, and such product are characterized by a large number of elastic gathers.) The package disclosed in the '696 publication does not provide a way to minimize or conceal such elastic gathers (such as, for example, waist elastic gathers), nor provide a way to conceal one or more ends or edges of the garments.